The company also claimed that its mobile ecosystem Android is generating $2.5bn (£1.6bn) in revenue and that there are 190m devices using the operating system in use.  

Google-owned sites generated revenues of $6.74bn (£4.27bn), representing 69% of all revenues, while its AdSense programmes generated $2.6bn (£1.7bn), amounting to 27% of revenue during the quarter.   

Meanwhile, revenues generated by operations outside the US represented 55% of total income for the period, with UK operations accounting for 11% of total income, or $1.05bn (£670m), according to the company.

Larry Page, Google CEO, said, “Our quarterly revenue was just short of $10bn. Google+ is now open to everyone and we just passed the 40m user mark.”

During an earnings call, he also noted that 3.4bn photos have been uploaded to its social networking site since its launch in the second quarter.    

“It’s still incredibly early days for Google+ because our goal is actually far bigger than the individual feature launches themselves,” he said.

Speaking about Google’s Android operations, Page said revenue from mobile had grown by two-and-a-half times in the past 12 months.

“Over 190m devices have now been activated globally,” he said. “I’m super excited about the soon-to-be released new version of Android called Ice Cream Sandwich, that’s right, Ice Cream Sandwich.”